


Chewing on Lightning

by Exorin, Ponderosa



Category: Constantine (TV), Hellblazer
Genre: Black Male Character, Canon Bisexual Character, Canon Character of Color, Enemies, Fuck Or Die, M/M, Sex Magic, Trapped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-09 03:40:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3234914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Exorin/pseuds/Exorin, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ponderosa/pseuds/Ponderosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Midnite forms a fist and jerks John’s arm up to dangle like a marionette’s. He shakes his arm, the rattle of the chain obnoxiously loud. “Tell me what it means--<em>the mark</em>. You know I don't dabble in Celtic nonsense.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Chewing on Lightning

When the world comes back into focus it’s made of shadows, dust, and pain. The air John sucks in isn’t hot enough for hellfire, and as he cracks an eye open the room in front of him looks unfamiliar but downright regular. So, he’s still alive then.

“Bastards,” he grumbles. The back of his head throbs like the devil where the bat had connected with his skull. He was lucky; a little higher and he’d have a cracked noggin and a vastly reduced vocabulary. “Fuckin' amateurs.”

He lifts his hand to investigate the damage and finds his arm heavier than it should be and the sound of sliding chain unmistakable. He looks down, and yes, that would be his own wrist clapped in metal and attached not to a handy post or a bit of wall, but to an arm distinctly not his own. He scowls. “No, oh you've got to be fuckin' kidding me.”

“Constantine. What a shame you've woken. Here I was thinking that handle over there surely belongs to a hacksaw. If you want to keep yourself in one piece, you’ll be waving your fingers ‘round now. Do your hocus pocus, magician, and untangle me from another of your messes.”

“Can’t even pick a lock, eh mate?”

“I am no thief. Not the likes of you, no how.” Midnite stares John down, eyes narrowing with menace. “Cat burglar, con-man, stealing anything you can get your filthy hands on--spells or otherwise.”

“You want out of here or not? 'Cause it's getting pretty damn hard to concentrate with you whining in my ear,” he says, examining the cuffs. It’s more manacle than anything: crudely beaten metal and a thick length of chain strung between. There’s no keyhole on the lock threaded through the clasp on either heavy cuff. He can’t ignore Midnite’s scrutiny, so he plays for the crowd, hand swirling through the air while his words do all the work to pull a rune to the surface, the mark glowing a dull, sullen orange like a smoldering flame. A matching rune comes to life on the door and the jamb begins to glow, the whole damn room lighting up along the baseboards with a creeping visual of the spell’s boundaries. John tips his face upwards to where a patch of starry sky shows through a breach in the roof. “Son of a... this is just what I fucking needed. You've got a lousy sense of humour, you know that.”

God doesn’t answer, but he rarely does.

Midnite forms a fist and jerks John’s arm up to dangle like a marionette’s. He shakes his arm, the rattle of the chain obnoxiously loud. “Tell me what it means-- _the mark_. You know I don't dabble in Celtic nonsense.”

The pain in his skull fading, John guesses that now that both participants were awake, the spell had kicked to life. His lips press together into a tight line. Healing with a rune like that meant one thing and one thing only. “You are absolutely not going to like it,” he says alongside a drawn-out sigh. He let his head drop back, bump against the wall they're leaned against like a pair of dolls. No pain, good as new. “Not that I'm especially pleased myself, mind you.”

“Cease your stalling and explain.”

“How much d'you know about sex magic?” John asks, turning just in time to catch Midnite's lip curling up in disgust. “I'll be taking that as you’ve some familiarity. Well then, what we've got here is some right sloppy work, but they've managed to get the rune dead on.... Lucky it’s no fertility charm, just some simple _jus primae noctis_ business. Why those lads want us to get nice and naked-cosy is beyond me. One of your boys out for a laugh or making a power play? Or maybe those wannabes didn’t have a clue what these were, same as you.”

“Forget the who and the why; that can be dealt with once I’m free of you.” Midnite shifts, maybe getting ready to drag them both to what very well might be a hacksaw and liberate himself of John the hard way.

Being fond of his limbs, John moves with Midnite, momentum carrying him close enough to cut off a string of expletives as he claps a hand to the back of Midnite's strong neck and drags him forward to press their lips together, rough and ill-fitted, an awkward clink of teeth and one-sided shove of tongue. He clings valiantly when Midnite tries to wrest away. “Come on mate, make this easy on me would you.”

“I’ll be doing no such thing.”

“Right, fine. How about I make it simple then?” John moves, pulling and jingling the chains between them until Midnite resigns himself to following. “I'll get all the ponce work done,” he says, using his unfettered arm to clear an old, wooden table in the corner of the room--bottles and garbage, branches and candles, bones and other forms of filth all clattering to the ground and spilling every which way, “and you, well, you should be used to fucking me over by now.”

Wary, Midnite hangs back as John unbuckles his belt and braces himself on his elbows. “Well?” John prompts, casting a look over his shoulder and skidding his feet apart to make the invitation as blatant as fucking possible. When Midnite takes the bait and reaches forward to drag his slacks down over his hips with one quick tug, John’s head tips forward again. “Ah, there you go big man, that's the spirit.”

“You won’t even try to take me?” Midnite says, perhaps more distrustful now than he was before. At John’s exasperated whuff of breath, Midnite slams a fist down on the table and John coughs into the dust rising like a cloud into his face. His hips fit snugly against John and pin him in place. Breath audible, he shoves a pair of fingers into John’s temple like the muzzle of a gun. “You’ll swear to me, John Constantine, that if I have you on this table--fornicate with you amongst all this witches filth--the spell will break as you say it will. That this is no trick or ruse.”

“Just get your bloody cock out.” No word from John’s mouth will persuade Midnite to believe him, so he reaches back with one hand to grab his ass and spread himself open, his head lowering against the table, turning so his cheek presses to the wood. His breathing evens out, goes slow and steady. Could be worse.

There’s a pause, a stillness in the air as Midnite makes his choice and then the soft rustle of fabric sliding down--not far enough, though, no. Just past his hips, John estimates, maybe far enough that if he twisted round he’d catch a peek at Midnite’s cock, trapped still. “How often do you get tested?” he says, and practically feels the heat of Midnite’s glare scrape across his skin. “Better a case of the clap than dying in this room, I suppose.”

The touch of hot skin makes John twitch and lose the shape of his words. He pushes back out of reflex as Midnite’s cock nudges against him, half-hard and getting harder. What is it getting the big man off, he wonders. Maybe a component of the charm is helping him get it up, or maybe it’s simply having John at his mercy. John’s been a knife in Midnite’s back for ages after all; surely he’s relishing the moment, probably keen on keeping John waiting and wondering if it’s a dry fuck coming his way. Well, John has done worse things in his life than get to know a mortal enemy in the Biblical sense. If Midnite takes him raw he’ll live through it, and besides, a charm like this won’t be satisfied if the man dons a rain coat. “Come on then, what're you waiting for?”

“Who knows what kind of things you've had crawling inside you,” Midnite sneers.

John approximates a shrug, says, “Probably best you don’t know,” before a wet glob of spit hits him right on the tailbone. Midnite, what a gentleman. The mess slides down, chased by the thick curve of Midnite’s cock slapping against him. John hadn’t intended to enjoy this, but if he’s honest with himself, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of waiting to get fucked open on nothing more than spit and determination.

“So you want me to call you Papa or...?”

“You'll not call me anything. You'll give me no names, Constantine.”

“Right then, Papa it i--” he starts, suddenly unable to finish as Midnite presses the spit-wet head of his cock up against the tight ring of John’s hole, the blunt nudge of it dragging a shaky, uneven exhale out of John. It’s the moment that follows that makes John start to second-guess this whole plan, when the touch of Midnite’s hand on his hip feels covetous and hungry, like John’s not just offering himself up, but that he _is_ an offering.

Midnite’s fingers wrap around John’s chained wrist, bending his arm up behind his back and leaning over him to pin him firmly in place against the table. The push of his hips is excruciatingly slow, a gritty drag to match the scrape of the wood beneath John’s cheek. “Where has your bravado gone? Your blustering arrogance?” Midnite’s voice purrs low and dangerous against the shell of John’s ear. “Not so loud now, are you, _magician_.”

Oh, the arrogance is there, John thinks, because even if this is a piss-poor idea, he’s still backing the plan. Not a word comes out of him though to prove it, his throat rebelling and only granting him the chance to groan in response while his legs shake and shiver--they’re spread as open as he can manage, thighs trembling--and John’s free arm flails out to find the edge of the table to grip on to. If Midnite wants loud, John can give it to him, but he lets the moan build up, taking a perverse sort of pleasure in how the sound reverberates in his chest while his body is slowly stretched to accommodate the achingly wide push of Midnite’s spit-slick cock sinking into him mere inches at a time.

The metal around his wrist and the chain pooled near his spine heats, not like a coal but like a stone warmed in the sun, a physical marker that the spell is being fuelled. John doesn’t need so crude a sign to know the pressure of the magic around them has grown. It feels somehow heavier, whatever it is, crawling amongst the shadows and dragging at the air. It’s like it’s building to be something more and John isn’t sure if Midnite can feel the way the magic lights up in sparks along his skin or the way it travels up his spine and ignites between the press of their bodies. He can taste it on his tongue and see it behind his eyes and all of his senses are screaming at him--

It’s the best bloody magic he’s ever touched. 

“You’ll be ruined,” Midnite says to him, the serpent hiss behind his words matching the sinuous roll of his hips as he fucks steadily into John. “After this, there’ll be no one who’ll compare.”

Midnite may not dabble in it, but he knows sex magic is powerful magic, and he very well could be right. John’s near drunk off the feeling, his bones replaced by those twisting shadows, like he’s built now from smoke and pleasure. He braces a hand against the wood and shoves up and back, trying to wrest a little control back or at least focus on the physical world, the raw perfection of the thick cock driving into him. “Bit full of yourself, aren’t you, mate,” he says, trying not to stutter or gasp or become a drooling mess of a man while Midnite watches so keenly.

Only--

It’s been so long since he’s felt this much power around him and inside of him. It’s like being an amateur again, when even the weakest dabbling felt like chewing on lightning. He drags his fingers along the table parallel with the grain, and the wood splinters and cracks and warps under his touch.

“Constantine,” Midnite is saying from somewhere very far away. There are more voices alongside his, whispering across the dark spaces of the worlds. Maybe one of them belongs to his Loa, gathering close to ride Midnite so that the gods themselves can have a piece of John too.

In his peripheral--both physical and mystical--John is aware of Midnite drawing a deep breath. Midnite’s eyes slide shut as if working to push out the creeping darkness, and the rhythm of his breath comes to match John's, an unconscious patterning as he devotes his focus to-- To what, John wonders idly, as pleasure and power slice through him. For a brief moment he sees himself as Midnite does: skin and bones under his hands, thumbs tracing the notches of John's spine. John who is grasping to hold onto something--even his sense of self--as his body takes everything Midnite gives him. John who is slack-mouthed and moaning, any attempt at words blurring together like rain sliding into the rush of the gutter. And that’s it, John knows, with a razor’s certainty; Midnite is focused on the way John _sounds_ \--each shuddering inhale, the rough way he groans, the noises that prove that John is well and truly getting off from being fucked so hard that the table is rocking from the thrust of Midnite's hips.

That focus sharpens, extending to John like a bubble forming around him, and it's both a blessing and a curse as it pushes back the magic circling their bodies. The main spell is unaffected, the power of it coursing up through his spine while the metal around his wrist throbs to the same rabbit pulse of his heart. When Midnite comes, finally jerks forward and spills thick and warm and wet into the heat of John’s body, it’s like an overloading circuit. The sizzle and shock leaves John trembling, a taste in his mouth from this brand of magic that he doesn’t want to let go of, that he wants to swallow down and keep at his fingertips forever.

He curses under his breath and moans, almost sobbing with how fucking good it feels as his own orgasm gets drawn out of him--like the remaining shadows themselves are mouthing at his prick, lapping up every bit of come that spits out onto the wood. John can’t fight the sensation, left with no choice as the spell eats up the crackle of energy that bleeds out of him. Metal sheds from his wrist like peeling paint as he reaches back to grab hold of Midnite at the top of his thigh, forcing him to stay buried, stay inside John for as long as possible so that John’s not bereft of everything when the magic leaves them.

“Overdid it, the two of us,” John says, when at last they’re separated. The words taste bitter in his mouth, like he’s been chewing on ash and wormwood and downed a chaser of very cheap scotch. With shaky limbs, he brushes off the flakes of metal that still cling to his skin. “Should’ve only popped the lock. Guess we do have some chemistry after all, big man.”

Midnite is silent as he fixes up his trousers. Beyond him, John sees smoke rising along the baseboards and the door to their makeshift prison hangs off its hinges, the wood no longer resembling wood at all. When Midnite digs through the pile of junk and proves that yes, what he’d been eyeballing when John first woke in here with him is indeed a hacksaw, John hastily does up his own trousers.

“I’d hoped we still had a bit of a truce,” he says, idly palming a few loose nails as he circles the table.

“Until the next time we cross paths, John Constantine,” Midnite says, and the murder in his eyes isn’t for John this time. His grip tightens around the handle of the hacksaw and he opens his arms wide, asking his gods to guide him to vengeance.

John watches him leave. He drops the nails into the dust and stretches slowly, feeling aches new and old. He takes his time, letting Midnite do all the work of clearing a path as he rescues his coat and digs through the pockets looking for a fag. Somewhere a floor or two away, there’s screaming.

“Ugly business,” he says to the emptiness of the room, and flicks a flame to life.


End file.
